


And the Dust Will Settle

by candesgirl



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Military, Angst, Blow Jobs, Late at Night, M/M, Out of Character, Power Play, Sex, Slash, dark at times, questionable past
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-03
Updated: 2012-08-07
Packaged: 2017-11-11 08:57:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/476824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candesgirl/pseuds/candesgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coulson likes to toy with them, the cocky ones. Clint likes to push their buttons, the guys with the stripes. Neither one of them anticipated the other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mikes_grrl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikes_grrl/gifts).



> This is for Mikey, because it's almost her birthday and she's done with school, GRADUATING!, and she liked the gif of Renner yelling 'Ride 'em cowboy!' from The Hurt Locker, and really, don't we all? This is a military AU, I know next to nothing about the military other than what Wikipedia tells me. This is a WIP, probably a chapter a week, maybe more, maybe less. And there will be porn, delicious military porn, and probably some dog tag porn too, because really, the world needs it. I need it. Mikey needs it ;)
> 
> Unbetad, all mistakes are my own. The characters aren't, though. I wish they were.
> 
> **ETA: This is a little darker and angstier than I originally anticipated, and the power play of sex is a strong point in this fic. Consenting adults, all consenting sex. This in no way resembles actual military anything that I know of, it's just stuff my depraved mind has come up with. If any of that will bother you at all, then please just pass on by.

Let them fight it out, kick the shit out of each other, that’s what he’d normally do, on any given night in any other place. Bunch of guys in close quarters, lubed up on whatever local hooch they could get their hands on tended to end the night in one of two ways; bloody on the floor, ass handed to them by some guy they’d take a bullet for the next day, or in some dark corner, up against a truck, in a dirty back room somewhere, for money or secrets or for the fuck of it, literally. Didn’t matter much at the end of the day, they worked over their boredom and the sometimes crippling loneliness best they knew how, fought or fucked out the adrenaline, whispered some lies and half truths to some whore or to some friendly. In the end it was all the same, all the time, all the world over and Coulson, he thrived on it, thrived on them. He fell into fuck it out category, crossed into the fighting category, pushed around the angry drunks and wrestled them into their corners until they were down for the count, down on all fours, down for him. He preyed on them, pushed their buttons as hard as they wanted them pushed and left them broken on the floor.

But this time was different, this kid, the pretty boy being pummeled by some guy with swollen hands and dead eyes, he was different. The kid, and Coulson had no right to call him that with just ten years on him, the kid was just taking it, not fighting back. He was on his feet, not going down for just anyone, not even this guy people would say was twice his size, tomorrow when the story spread, when the drunks shook it off and the fighters flexed their broken, bloodied knuckles and the boys with the more carnal of desires tried to hide their short walks of shame. They’d talk about this kid and how he was taking it, hit after hit, blow after blow, spitting blood and staggering for sure, but on his feet and staring his opponent right between the eyes the whole time, something like a smile on his face.

And so Coulson watched, along with the rest of the shitty little makeshift bar, waiting for something, for the kid to snap out of it maybe, to do something. The big guy stopped, tired or bored or numb and it didn’t matter why because the kid, he pitched forward, put his hands on his knees to finally catch his breath and then Coulson was behind him, wrenching his arm up behind him and forcing him to drop the dull, sharp silver he’d grabbed from his ankle. The big guy, he had his own people, pulling him back and telling him ‘you got that, man’, like sucking his dick but without all the spit and the gagging and the mess. The mess, though, the mess was Coulson’s favorite part, and he’d never seen a bigger, prettier mess than the kid he’d just forced to his knees.

The air was thick and hot, hundred and ten degrees in the fucking shade in the middle of the night, and this kid on his knees, he was burning, on fire. Coulson was on his knees too, with the kid, momentum and gravity had brought them both down hard but the kid hadn’t fought, he’d accepted the wrench of his arm behind his back, the force of an arm at the back of his neck, a knee first to his back, then on either side of him, holding him in easy submission. No one spoke until Coulson cleared his throat, ordered the big guy out of there with nothing more than a few gruff words, told them all to get back to their bunks because they were gonna need their beauty rest for the princess treatment at O-five hundred, just a few short hours away.

They moved quick enough, aware of Coulson and his princess treatment, aware too of Coulson’s reputation and of that look in his eye, like the cat that got the canary. The place cleared out, nothing left but the two of them, the stench of adrenaline and booze and the dirt on their knees. Coulson let go of the kid, got up, left him there on the floor with his dirt and his dust and his blood and his pride, didn’t help him up or touch him, didn’t ask him his name. He left with an itch to scratch, to run his fingers through cropped but longer than regulation hair, to tell the kid how good he looked on his knees, to tell him what a pretty mess he was.

Specialist Clint Barton never said a word, never flinched, watched his new NCO, Staff Sergeant Coulson walk out of there, smiled through the split lip and the blood and the mess. He’d let that big guy try to beat him down, let him take his shots at the new guy, made his name in his first hours there. He’d be the crazy one here, the kid who wasn’t afraid of anything, or anyone. The guy who wouldn’t be brought to his knees in submission for just anyone. The one who had a thing for trouble, for breaking the rules. 

**

Staff Sergeant Coulson made his way back to his bunk, kicked off his boots at his desk, went over the little bit of intel he had on the the changing of the guard for tomorrow, on the new soldiers coming in to replace the guys whose tours were complete. Most were names he knew, guys coming back for their second or third go around. He picked up a marker, circled the only name he didn’t know, stripped off the rest of his clothes down this his underwear and got into bed. His princesses were in for a real treat tomorrow morning, them and the new kid, Specialist Clint Barton.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coulson isn't thinking about Clint and the pretty lips of his he keeps talking about. Until he is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The power play of sex between two consenting adults is a favorite plot device of mine. There's some of that here.

The next morning, and those that followed, had come early and been tough, as Coulson had promised. Barton stepped in line with the rest of them, carried himself on the exaggerated momentum of rumor, stomping around like an eccentric rockstar after his death wish of a fight. He picked right up like he’d always been there, like he’d earned the right to be and a lot of the men, they could respect that, if not respect Barton himself. Kid pulled his weight well enough, when he wasn’t flapping his gums, talking about his can’t-miss sniper skills, proudly showing off the still fresh scar from his split lip and the lingering shiner that made him look more like a kohl rimmed rent boy and less like the badass whose boots he wanted to fill.

‘I ain’t afraid of anyone or anything’, it’s what Barton kept saying, ‘not even that fuckin’ giant douchebag who started a fight with me ‘cause I have pretty lips'.

He looked around then, asked anyone who was listening, 'Can you believe that? Guy said I had pretty lips, pretty like a girl. Said I had no right being here with lips like that. Called me a girl. Let me tell you, I ain't no girl but I know this one girl back home, she could kick my ass, his ass too, and man she wouldn't harm a hair on her pretty red head doing it, neither.' 

Someone asked Barton then why he didn't take the guy down, someone else asked if he fucked the pretty red head who could kick his ass. Barton laughed through it all, amped up his mid-nowhere accent, told them no, he never fucked her but he'd put his life down for hers, switched gears before more questions were asked about her. He moved on to the other question, said he was getting ready to shank the big guy that night, leave him dripping all red and pretty with his combat knife until Coulson had stepped in, brought him down swift and hard like some army ninja. Barton turned to Coulson then, asked him what he thought.

'I think you didn't fuck the girl because she didn't let you,' Coulson told him, and Barton laughed. 

'You're not wrong, sir,' Barton said, 'but that's not what I meant. I meant do you think I have pretty lips, you know, like the guy said, like a girl' 

The chatter died down, Coulson warned them all to get back to whatever it was the army expected them to be doing. 'You too, Barton,' Coulson told him when he hadn't moved.

'I'm waiting for your answer to my question, sir, about my lips, sir,' Barton lowered his voice, his gaze. 

‘That’s Staff Sergeant to you, Specialist’, Coulson said without a pause, stepping closer to Barton. 

‘Well then, do you think I have pretty lips, Staff Sergeant, sir?’ Barton asked, this time looking right at Coulson.

Coulson saw through him, knew the act. He was drawn to it, to young and cocky guys like Barton, always had been. He liked them this way, for a time; eager to prove a point, in need of some praise or approval or reprimand, chasing that thing they’re rock hard for, that thing they just never got. And Coulson, he knew how easy it could be with a kid like Barton, knew what kind of trouble those pretty lips could be, on or off the field. 

‘I’m sure we’re all imagining how pretty your lips would look around a gag, Barton. Keep up the chatter and we’ll find out,’ Coulson said, fixed on Barton’s lips.

‘Sir, yes sir. Gag, sir, Staff Sergeant, sir,’ Barton said, cracked lip burning against the strain of an arrogant smile.

The place went blissfully quiet after that.

**

Barton never missed his mark, it was his thing, his only thing and he was proud of it. He saw what he needed to see, got it taken care of, one shot and done. It’s what had gotten him there in the first place, in the middle of a dusty, half abandoned town in some foreign land he’d never heard of, let alone thought of just a few years before. 

He’d spotted the guy in a local bar back home, a place where Nat tended bar. The guy was smart in his crisp uniform with all its decorations, and Clint had watched, amused as what Nat liked to call the soldier groupies, in their too small halter tops and fluffed hair fluttered their lashes and told the guy it was too bad he didn’t have a ring on his finger because he was some catch. The guy, he was a captain, Clint knew what the stripes meant, he’d excused himself politely, pressed up against Clint on his way to the bathroom and again on the way back, this time headed out toward a side door. Clint had followed him out with a nod to Nat, asked him if he wanted some company, being the catch he was and all, and the guy, he had laughed even as he pinned Clint against the building, told him he liked a guy who saw what he wanted and went for it, told him even as he thrust against Clint that the army could use a young man like him.

That had been the start of it, of his preference for the uniform, the more stripes the better. They were easy to spot, the guys who wouldn’t mind some time with him and often just a firm introduction, direct eye contact and a sincere offer to get out of there, maybe give them a lift somewhere was all it took. Few steps out to his car or out into an alley or over to the bathroom and he’d have them unzipped, undone. It was a heady feeling, all that power sliding into his body any way he wanted them to, any way they could get it.

He started to live more for those nights and that charged air, less for the sort of trouble he’d been getting into otherwise. He’d been following around his no good brother and his even worse friends for too long and one night, after he’d come home high on adrenaline and on the feel of some sergeant drying on his skin, his brother had turned on him, beat him down, called him the kind of names that Clint would swear didn’t hurt him, would later swear didn’t haunt him in the middle of the night there in that godforsaken foreign land. 

Clint had left then, didn’t grab anything, not even the bow that had belonged to his dad, the thing he’d practiced with and caused his fingers to bleed, the thing that would be his only real shot of being the kind of young man the army could truly use. He left his shitty car in the driveway with the keys in the ignition, crushed his phone underfoot so he couldn't call or text Nat to talk him out of it and walked downtown to the nearest recruiting office. It was the middle of the the night, he slept outside their door, he was twenty five. 

**

Coulson didn’t pull Barton’s records. He didn’t contact Major Fury and ask for permission to review the kid’s psych evals. He didn’t wonder why he’d been sent this cocksure twenty seven year old marksman who with just two years of service under his belt, could be the best shot Coulson had ever seen. He didn’t care why Barton let some guy beat him down without a fight, or what sort of shit he was looking to prove. Coulson didn’t think about Barton and his pretty lips, not until Barton stepped inside his sleeping quarters, not until Barton was on his knees, not until Barton looked up at him behind thick, dust coated eyelashes.

‘You know you shouldn’t be here,’ Coulson told him. 

‘You know you shouldn’t want me here, sir,’ Barton said, unzipped him.

‘Stop calling me sir, Specialist,’ Coulson ran a hand through Barton’s longer than regulation hair. 

‘Stop wanting me to,’ Barton reached inside Coulson’s fatigues, pushed down standard issue underwear, licked a wide stripe up Coulson’s hard, thick length until he felt fingers run through his hair. ‘Sir.’

‘Barton,’ Coulson said, steady voice, steady breath, hand in Barton’s hair as he took him down his throat to the root, in one smooth, quick movement. He didn’t look away when Barton looked up at him again, didn’t wipe the dust off Barton’s eyelids, didn’t press his thumb against the dark red crack in Barton’s lip. Coulson didn’t tell him he had pretty lips, prettier than any girl's, even prettier stretched around him while he came.

**

Barton swallowed, eyes never leaving Coulson, wiped his mouth, eyes never leaving Coulson. He stood, body heavy with arousal against Coulson’s, leaned in. ‘Hit him with my first shot, sir. One and done.’ 

Coulson watched him leave, blood still rushing loud in his ears.


End file.
